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2016/08/01

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9 Weird Facts About Babies

Posted: 01 Aug 2016 04:00 AM PDT

The following article is from Uncle John’s Factastic Bathroom Reader.

(Image credit: Flickr user Dave Herholz)

Babies: they’re even weirder than you thought.

1. They can’t taste salt. Babies are born with a well-developed sense of taste— but not for salt. Studies show that babies can’t taste salt until they’re about four months old. They can taste other flavors as well as adults can, especially sweet, bitter, and sour flavors (which might explain all the “baby tastes lemon” videos on YouTube)— and maybe even better: some studies indicate that babies actually have more taste buds than adults do.

2. They don’t shed tears. Babies cry an awful lot— but they can’t shed tears: they don’t have functional tear ducts until they’re between three and twelve weeks old. (They can, however, produce “basal tears”— the nonemotional tears we produce constantly to keep our eyes moist.)

3. They have no kneecaps.Really! Well… sort of. If you X-ray a baby’s legs, you likely won’t see anything where the kneecaps should be, or if you do, it’ll just be small, smudgy spots. Reason: all bones start off as cartilage, and they harden, or ossify, over time. Kneecaps take an especially long time to form— from three to five years— and because cartilage doesn’t show up on X-rays, babies appear to have no kneecaps. That lack of hard kneecaps is a good thing, because the spongy tissue serves to absorb some of the abuse toddlers take during their crawling months and from their frequent falls.

(Image credit: We El

4. They have more bones than adults do. Way more— about 300, compared to our paltry 206. The reason is related to why they lack real kneecaps: some of a baby’s separate bones fuse together into single bones as they ossify in the months and years after birth. Example: the skull starts off as several separate bones that fuse together into one large bone by about the age of two.

5. They menstruate. While still in the womb, babies are exposed to high levels of the female hormone estrogen. At birth, when the baby becomes “disconnected” from mom, as it were, those estrogen levels fall rapidly and in girls can cause what is known as pseudomenstruation, similar to menstruation in young and adult women. (Sharp drops in estrogen and related hormones are in fact what triggers menstruation in adult women.) Mothers unaware of this phenomenon often freak out when they see a little blood in their babies’ diapers— but it’s very common and happens in about a quarter of all female babies, usually in the first seven days of life.

(Image credit: Topato)

6. They lactate. The drop in hormone levels that causes psueudomen-struation can also cause galactorrhea, a phenomenon in which newborns develop tiny breast buds— and actually lactate, producing tiny amounts of milk from their nipples. And it can happen in boys as well as girls. Like pseudomenstruation, it’s not dangerous or uncommon, occurring in about 5 percent of all newborns, and can persist for up to two months. (In old European folklore, milk from the breasts of newborn babies was referred to as “witch’s milk” and was thought to have magical powers.)

7. They pee. Babies start urinating in the womb just a few months after conception. Where does it go? They drink it! More precisely, the urine mixes with the amniotic fluid surrounding the baby in the uterus. And by the third trimester of pregnancy, a fetus swallows about a liter of amniotic fluid every day. Since a fetus does not need hydration or nutrition in the womb— that comes from mom via the umbilical cord— experts say this serves mostly as practice for swallowing and digestion. This means that every last one of us spent several months of our lives drinking our own pee. (Fetal pooping is rare… but it does happen sometimes. And that’s all we’re going to say about that.)

(Image credit: FelixCheng)
 

8. They remember what they taste. As we told you earlier, newborn babies cannot taste salt, but they can taste other flavors— and they can taste those flavors while they’re still in the womb, starting from about four or five months into pregnancy. Amniotic fluid is believed to be affected by the food the expectant mother eats, which, in turn, is believed to affect a baby’s flavor preferences after birth. If a pregnant mom eats a lot of garlicky foods, for example, the baby will taste that in her amniotic fluid in the womb— and will have a good chance of being drawn to garlic-flavored foods after birth.

9. They’re covered in hair. Sometimes babies are born with just a few tufts of hair on the top of their heads, or a fine “peach fuzz” all over their tiny domes. This isn’t what we’re talking about. As it develops in the womb, a baby’s entire body becomes covered in a thin layer of hair called lanugo. Child development experts say that the hair helps regulate a body’s temperature, in utero. So, if your baby is born looking like a werewolf-in-training, don’t worry— it’s perfectly normal. The hair will gently fall out on its own over the first few weeks of the newborn’s life. If your baby wasn’t born covered in lanugo, well, it already fell off toward the end of gestation, and the baby ate it.

_______________________________

The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Factastic Bathroom Reader. The 28th volume of the series is chock-full of fascinating stories and facts, and comes in both the Kindle version and paper with a classy cloth cover.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!

Eric Cartman Quotes Wrongly Attributed To Well Known People

Posted: 01 Aug 2016 02:00 AM PDT

Eric Cartman is by far the most controversial character on South Park, and over the years that Cheesy Poof lovin' sociopath has committed virtually every crime in the book.

So to continue his legacy of liberally spreading sin around Imgur user xiucutil decided to take the wise words of Eric Cartman and wrongly attribute them to various famous folks.

The quotes are more honest than these well known people have ever been in their entire life, and so spot on you'll start to wonder whether Cartman is actually channeling these celebs when he speaks.

They also show us how much certain famous folks have in common with Eric Cartman, proving great minds tend to think alike.

See more "Eric Cartman Quotes Wrongly Attributed To Celebrities" here (NSFW due to language)

Thieves Inadvertently Save Dog Locked in Hot Truck

Posted: 01 Aug 2016 12:00 AM PDT

It was 9:15 in the morning in front of the Irish Nobleman Pub in Chicago. The temperature was already 80ºF and rising rapidly. The owner of the truck had locked his German Shepherd inside for over an hour.

A gang of 4 men walked along the street, smashing the windows of parked cars and snatching goods inside. When they got to the truck, they broke in to steal a laptop computer. The dog took the opportunity to leave the truck.

Video footage from a security camera in front of the pub captured the incident. Pub owner Declan Morgan tells CBS News that he doesn't have a lot of sympathy for the truck owner:

“He didn’t think it was a big deal that his dog was in there for an hour. I told him I would’ve smashed the window if I knew the dog was in there.”

-via Nothing to Do with Aborath

The Strange Ways Pokémon Has Been Censored For American Audiences

Posted: 31 Jul 2016 10:00 PM PDT

From what American audiences have seen of the Pokémon franchise it hardly seems like it needs to be censored, but some major changes are made before anything Pokémon hits stores in the U.S.

Let's start with Jynx- in Japan this Pokémon is clearly drawn as a blackface caricature, and although Japanese audiences have never taken offense to the character they knew audiences in the U.S. would.

So what did they do to fix the problem?

They painted her purple, so now she looks like the Eggplant Wizard's wife instead of a minstrel show reject.

Pokémon cards have undergone a similar cleanup process to be sold in America, which meant removing anything which could be seen as controversial or inappropriate for kids.

So swastikas were removed from the Koga's Ninja Trick card, Misty's trainer card nudity was replaced with tears, and Grimer's pervy pupils were reoriented so he's no longer looking up some girl's skirt.

See 5 Weird Ways Pokémon Has Been Censored here (contains NSFW material)

Nine Otters and a Butterfly

Posted: 31 Jul 2016 08:00 PM PDT

A family of otters are fascinated with a butterfly. It appears that the butterfly is fascinated with the otters, too, as it hangs around long enough to make a game out of it!

(YouTube link)

Someone should take this footage and make one of those web toys where the otters’ gazes follow your cursor. Surely the butterfly has existed in enough of the screen area to do that. -via Pleated-Jeans

All the Ways the Internet of Things Could Kill You

Posted: 31 Jul 2016 05:59 PM PDT

We're been making a whole lot of products "smart" over the last year or two and while it might seem to make your life easier to have everything hooked up to the internet and connected via Bluetooth, it's only a matter of time before the machine revolution begins. Don't believe me? Just look at all the simple and evil ways your mad machines can start killing you -even your Bluetooth tampons and smart water cups.

Little Boy Can't Understand Why Wire Bucket Can't Hold Water

Posted: 31 Jul 2016 03:59 PM PDT


(Video Link)

YouTube user RenoGeek and his son visited a children's museum. While there, the toddler tried to fill a wire mesh bucket with water. Unfortunately, the bucket was defective. It couldn't hold any water at all. I hope that he was able to get a refund for his admission ticket.

-via Tastefully Offensive

Can You See Ghosts?

Posted: 31 Jul 2016 02:00 PM PDT

Beware of the possible consequences before you give personal information to a stranger. Everyone’s got needs, even if it’s just for attention. This is a classic comic from John McNamee at Pie Comic.

Take This - F Society Norms, Wear This Mask Instead!

Posted: 31 Jul 2016 12:00 PM PDT


take this by haplo

Beware of strange (and possibly imaginary) men wearing masks who bear gifts, for what they have to offer can do a number on your sanity. Even worse- when he takes of his mask to reveal the face of your father, and your mind goes into kernel panic mode trying to make sense of what you're seeing. People say you act like a robot, with eyes that stare off into space and a monotone way of speaking which they find off-putting, but that's just the wall of code you've built up inside your mind to keep him in and them out. If they only knew what the Mr. lurking inside you is capable of, they'd know better than to belittle you for trying to keep the destroyer inside you at bay...

Don't dress like a robot, wear this Take This t-shirt by Haplo and show the world you're a geeky mind to be reckoned with...or just a huge Mr. Robot fan!

Visit haplo's NeatoShop for more mighty geeky designs:

msice bearGrammarPeaky bl

View more designs by haplo | More TV T-shirts | New T-Shirts

Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!

Why Cake Wrecks Happen

Posted: 31 Jul 2016 11:59 AM PDT

This explains everything. Jen Yates has been posting pictures of store-bought cakes with misspelled messages in icing for years at Cake Wrecks. She’s even compiled two books of them. Now we finally learn why it happens. It’s all part of their training!

Where Can You Go Topless in America

Posted: 31 Jul 2016 10:00 AM PDT

America is a land with many contradictory laws and many states and localities outlawing things that are otherwise legal in the country. One surprisingly complex area of law involves where a woman can or cannot go topless. Fusion took a look at each state's laws to suss out where you can or can't legally bear the breast and the answer is a lot more complex than you might imagine -and that's without adding in the complexities of county or city laws. The image above gives a basic understanding of their discovery, but you don't want to miss the accompanying article discussing how and why these laws get passed.

Take a Hint

Posted: 31 Jul 2016 07:59 AM PDT

The following article is from Uncle John’s Factastic Bathroom Reader.

(Image credit: Flickr user Kevin O'Mara)

Whether you call them "everyday shortcuts" or "life hacks," these simple household tips are bound to make you ask "why didn’t I think of that?" (And they’re very entertaining.)

Place a coin inside the bottom hem of a tie to keep it from flying around and smacking you in the face on a windy day.

• Throw wrinkled shirts in the dryer with a few ice cubes for 10 minutes on high to steam away the wrinkles.

• To help remove deodorant stains on your shirt, rub a dryer sheet on the stain before washing it.

• To keep canvas shoes dry in the rain, rub beeswax over them and blow dry until the wax melts. That will create a waterproof seal.

• Cheetos are delicious, but the sticky orange fingers you get after handling them are a pain. Use chopsticks instead to keep your fingers clean.

• Keep pizza hot on the ride home by putting the pizza box on your car seat and turning on the seat warmer.

• Do you bang your fingers with a hammer every time you nail something into a wall? Use a fine-tooth comb to keep the nail in place and keep your fingers safe.

• Scratches in wood can be fixed by rubbing a de-shelled walnut over the area.

• Putting a dry tea bag in your shoes overnight will absorb funky odors. (But remember to throw away the bags when you’re done.)

• For an effective way to clean a dirty toilet, drop in a couple of denture tablets. After 20 minutes, scrub the toilet bowl and flush.

• Spraying nonstick cooking spray on shovels will keep them ice-free while you’re shoveling snow.

• Price tag stickers are usually a nightmare to remove. Once you’ve picked away most of the tag, slather peanut butter over the site and wipe with a cloth to remove any remaining glue residue.

• Running a slightly damp rubber glove over furniture will pick up pet hair quickly and easily.

• After sweeping up the remnants of a broken glass, press a slice of bread over the area. Any remaining glass bits will stick to the bread.

_______________________________

The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Factastic Bathroom Reader. The 28th volume of the series is chock-full of fascinating stories and facts, and comes in both the Kindle version and paper with a classy cloth cover.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!

Daredevil Plans to Jump out of an Airplane at 25,000 Feet into a Net

Posted: 31 Jul 2016 07:34 AM PDT

(Image: Stride Gum)

UPDATE: He did it! And Aikins survived! You can watch the amazing video here.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Master skydiver Luke Aikins has had some close calls during his 18,000 jumps. But now he's taking new risks because for this jump, he won't have a parachute. Or a wingsuit. He's just going to jump out of a plane and, hopefully, land in a net on the ground.

Hollywood producers first pitched this insane idea to Aikins a couple years ago. He dismissed it immediately, but has contemplating it ever since. Aikins talked to France 24 news:

He said as much to his wife after a couple Hollywood guys looking to create the all-time-greatest reality TV stunt floated the idea by him a couple years ago.

"I said, 'You won't believe these guys,'" the affable skydiver recalls with a robust laugh. "'They want me to jump out without a parachute.' She said, 'Oh, with a wingsuit.' I said, 'No, they want me to do it with nothing.' We both had a good laugh about that."

But in the weeks that followed he couldn't shake one persistent thought: Could anybody actually do this and live to tell the tale?

Because if anyone could, Aikins wanted to be that guy.

The net, which is still under construction, will be a third of the size of a football field and held aloft 20 stories high by cranes. The design needs a bit of refinement:

The landing target, which has been described as similar to a fishing trawler net, has been tested repeatedly using dummies.

One of those 200-pound (91-kilogram) dummies didn't bounce out. It crashed right through.

-via Dave Barry

Dog Warns Girl in Horror Movie That She's in Mortal Peril

Posted: 31 Jul 2016 06:00 AM PDT


(Video Link)

Khaleesi, a 4-year old English Bulldog, loves to watch TV. Recently, she watched Guillermo del Toro's 2015 horror film Crimson Peak. She became alarmed when a supernatural menace approached and attacked a young girl.

"Run, run!" she barks. But the girl foolishly ignored Khaleesi.

The pup is really too young to be watching such scary movies. 

-via Laughing Squid

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